


My Unshaped Form

by samalander



Category: The Golem and the Jinni - Helene Wecker
Genre: F/M, Home, Homecoming, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 19:30:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2823452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/pseuds/samalander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He comes home to New York, and he comes home to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Unshaped Form

**Author's Note:**

  * For [major_general](https://archiveofourown.org/users/major_general/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, major_general! I hope you enjoy this, and that you have a great holiday!
> 
> The title is from Psalm 139:16,  
>  _Your eyes saw my unformed body;_  
>  _all the days ordained for me were written in your book_  
>  _before one of them came to be._
> 
> Thanks to F for the beta, and to A who gave me a floor to write on.

The day he returned to New York, Chava stood on the docks, waiting. Around her, the stevedores unpacked their ships, moving crates and thinking of home, of food, of women. They wanted quietly, she found, and it was a welcome kind of quiet in the midst of the city. Their want was a kind of quiet she could get lost in, a kind of quiet that spoke only to base desires and not the frantic, needy wants that richer people had-- _macaroons, jewels, vacations_. Somehow Chava found a solace in the want of simple things.

She had told him she would be here, told him to expect her stalwart and tall, but still, Chava was filled with an anxiety she couldn't place. Part of her wanted him to return, to come back into her life like the lightning cloud he was, to ruffle her feathers and help her mark the time.

And part of her was hoping, in a slow, aching way, that he'd have a round-bellied copper flask in his pocket, that he'd bring her master home to her.

But Ahmad appeared as he was, unchanged as she was unchanging, at the top of the gangplank. She couldn't stop the smile that filled her face, though it hurt holding back the hope that had been hot in her chest.

"Hello," he said, holding his suitcase between them like a shield. 

Chava did not embrace him, though part of her wanted to. 

"Hello," she said instead, hoping that he'd hear her fondness, her appreciation in her words. "How was your trip?"

The Jinni smiled, sorrow fresh in his eyes. "It was--productive," he said, not meeting her gaze.

She couldn't help herself, her eyes raking over his form in search of a for telltale bulge or curves in his clothing. "And--him?"

"Where he needs to be," Ahmad said, taking a step past her and turning towards Washington Street. "Safe."

"Safe," she echoed, falling into step next to him. "Where?"

"Do you really want to know?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. 

Chava shook her head. No, she decided, it was probably better if she didn't know.

* * *

Ahmad put himself back to work-- everything Arbeely gave him, he completed, and then some. He considered it a penance of a kind, working off a debt that he didn't understand, repaying a sum to a man who he owed nothing.

The days were full, and they were good. But the nights were what the Jinni lived for.

Nights were quiet and cool as winter stole into New York. Ahmad didn't mind the cold--he'd lived enough in the desert that cold was a thing he knew--and he could heat himself, could imagine the ember he was, burning hot in the center of the city's forge.

It was much was much more uncomfortable for Chava, her joints sticking as the earth she was built from grew brittle and stiff. So some evenings, when the cold was too biting, when walking was a chore and not a delight, she would steal Ahmad into her rooms to sit, to talk. It was a risk, he knew, a risk that her neighbors would talk. But they were a transient bunch, and loose of morals themselves, so perhaps she thought it would be okay.

Or perhaps she didn't care. Like so many things between them, he never asked and she never offered an explanation.

He'd been home--and it was home, New York, it really was--for all of a month, when he realized how she spent so much of her time. 

"You sew," he said, touching a pile of garish theatre clothes that she'd piled neatly on a table.

"I take in mending," she said, simply. "It passes the nights."

"Is that all?"

"What else is there?"

Ahmad stared for a moment, trying to understand what she was doing. "You spend your nights fixing things," he said. "When you could be making things."

Chava shrugged stiffly. "I make things all day, at the bakery."

The Jinni shook his head. "It's not the same," he said. "I--when's the last time you made something because you wanted to? And not because someone told you to?"

"I made my wedding dress," she said, not meeting his eyes.

"Oh," Ahmad breathed, trying not to let the sadness of the moment hit him too hard.

* * *

Spring crept into New York like an immigrant: quietly, sequestered on Ellis Island and then explosive, falling into communities and making the New World its New Home. Chava relished the warm, damp press of the air. It was refreshing, after so many long snowy nights spent alone, nights when she couldn't get the Jinni into her rooms and sat, instead, picking seams and resewing them.

"Would you like to get married?" she asked, the first night they could go out, the dark and the still of the park like an embrace.

Ahmad clutched his umbrella tightly. "Married?"

"Yes." She nodded. "Married."

"To you?"

Her heart hurt, suddenly, though Chava couldn't say if it was because he seemed hesitant, or because he seemed interested. "To anyone."

"Not to anyone," he said, staring at the arch in front of them. "Not just to anyone."

* * *

Chava never spoke of the night they trapped Schaalman unless Ahmad brought it up first. She never seemed comfortable with the idea, the concept that her master was gone. Still, there were nights when the Jinni's mind was consumed by those thoughts, the idea that Saleh had saved her. Saved both of them.

"I don't want to hurt people," he told her, watching a duck paddle lightly through the water in Central Park. "I think--I've hurt people. By being careless."

"Careless," she said, softly. "Do you remember--the time I talked about destroying myself? The night you stole my paper?"

"Yes," he said, still not looking at her.

"That's what-- that's what I was trying to say. That I didn't want to be careless. To be careless, and hurt people. That's it."

"If I'd been careful--" he started, but she shook her head.

"No use in if," she said.

He finally looked at her. She was pretty, he thought. She'd always been pretty, but it was in a plain, simple way. He decided, just this once, to be careless again. To do the one thing that care had dictated he avoid. He leaned in and pressed his lips to hers.

She was cool to the touch, as always, but she seemed to warm as his lips pressed against hers, responding to the kiss as if she were coming alive.

It didn't last long; just enough so he felt like she understood.

"That," he said, when he moved back from her, "was the last careless thing I will ever do."

"It wasn't careless," she said, stepping into his space so she could take his hand in hers.

The Jinni laughed. "What was it, then?"

"Right," the Golem said with a smile. She turned on her heel and started walking, leading him back along the twisting streets, back to her rooms on Eldridge Street.

Ahmad said nothing. He just followed, letting the cool safety of her hand guide him home.


End file.
